I'm going to toss out a plea for Darth Traya before she's buried under Junko and co.

I know she's not fuckable but she might actually be one of the few well written villains that video games have. If you've never played KotoR II, do yourself a favor and go play it.

Handsome Jack is a worthy villain. He's got it all: Wealth, power, sarcasm, god-complex, complete disregard for life, a pony made of diamonds, and a backstory that was shaping up to be somewhat tragic before I quit 1.5 because holy shit seriously the moon physics.

Porky, oh man. What a fucking bundle of mental health problems to all lay on one kid. Let me just say that while Porky is a worthy villain if you've only played Earthbound, wow does he really fucking up the ante in Mother 3.

Also, Junko is literally the goddamn best. Spoilers for Danganronpa and all that but;

Not only is she a disassociative disorder sporting garu-nihilist who literally brought about the apocalypse and goes super ahegao over dying in one of her own death traps, but the entirety of the second game is based around people being so fucking hot for her and her brand of ultimate-despair that they defile her corpse to dismember it and transplant pieces of her body onto their own body just to get some tiny bit closer to her AND ALSO SHE'S A GIANT CELL-PHONE INHABITING MATRIX VIRUS QUEEN.

I guess what I'm mostly saying is that if Danganronpa v.3 literally has nothing to do with the first two games it mostly just makes me sad because no more Junko.

It's a retelling/adaptation of Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now, so yeah, basically.

It's one of those games that either hits or misses people, based on whether they feel like the game is "tricking them." Some people don't like it when a game forces you through subversion into the villain role. I saw similar blowback with Undertale's trick killing of Toriel.

It's a valid point, I suppose, because it is a form of GOTCHA!!!, but I tend to just appreciate that a video game is doing something different.

In the game, the player controls Captain Martin Walker, who is sent into a post-catastrophe Dubai with an elite Delta Force team on a recon mission. As the game progresses, Walker's mental health deteriorates, as he begins to experience hallucinations and slowly realizes the horror of war. Players can hide behind cover, vault over obstacles, and shoot enemies while utilizing a variety of gadgets.

I fucking love wikipedia.

Anyway, the most effective thing about The Line is how Walker's initial "Tango down" or "Threat neutralized" when killing a hostile later in the game becomes "DIE, MOTHERFUCKER!" and similar.

Friday wrote:It's one of those games that either hits or misses people, based on whether they feel like the game is "tricking them." Some people don't like it when a game forces you through subversion into the villain role.

Where it lost me is that it's pretty obvious where the game's going with this and there's no real way to avoid or deny it, other than turning off the game which is kind of a pointless gesture. It's pretty much "Press X to Kick Puppy" at various points, especially the critical "WHOOPS WE MADE A BIG MISTAKE" one.

Friday wrote:It's one of those games that either hits or misses people, based on whether they feel like the game is "tricking them." Some people don't like it when a game forces you through subversion into the villain role.

Where it lost me is that it's pretty obvious where the game's going with this and there's no real way to avoid or deny it, other than turning off the game which is kind of a pointless gesture. It's pretty much "Press X to Kick Puppy" at various points, especially the critical "WHOOPS WE MADE A BIG MISTAKE" one.

It's kind of funny, isn't it?

I mean if a game railroads you towards saving the kingdom and fucking the princess you're like HELL YE'AH I AM THE TOUGHEST MOTHERFUCKER ON EARTH

but if a game railroads you towards killing the wrong people with guns you're like I WAS FLIM-FLAMMED BY THIS MACHINE I DEMAND REPARATIONS

TA: Bison is whatever you want him to be. I mean, this poll is called "Hottest VG Villain" so by that metric you should only vote for him based on his videogame appearances, which would exclude Raul Julia.

On the other hand, it also says "Hottest" because that's my trademark meme for these polls. It started when I was actually asking about sex appeal in a tournament of sexy girls. Now it doesn't mean anything, or rather, it means whatever you want it to mean. People have been asking me "how should I vote in these polls" for awhile now and my answer has consistently been: "Here's what I'm asking at the start of the poll, feel free to ignore this and vote however you want."

In this case, I'm asking the following: "Who's the best, most well written, most effective/terrifying video game villain?"

Feel free to ignore that, and vote however you want.

Want to upvote Dark Queen? She's literally garbage as far as a character goes, but she's cool because dom outfit and huge tits and you were also 11 and holy shit look at those huge fucking tits.

Want to upvote SA-X? She's not even a character at all. Even Pyramid Head had a "personality" to go with his intimidation factor. SA-X is basically the same type of "relentless invincible terrifying pursuer" type, who also happens to be an evil copy of everyone's favorite (literally, she won the Best Videogame Main Character Poll) space bounty-hunter. But she has no characterization, at all. Literally none. She is effective and terrifying, though, so it's not entirely wrong to vote for her.

But again, I don't care how people vote or why. I put some guidelines in place before the poll starts because it's more fun than saying:

"Here are some videogame villains. This is a popularity poll."

But I mean, that's what this is. I don't mind that this is what this is. Raul Julia is fucking awesome and if you want to vote for Dictator because you love Raul Julia, you're not going to bother me.